Two telecom operators lobbies are sparring over refarming of spectrum in 900 MHz band. While AUSPI, which represents dual technology players such as TTSL, Reliance Communications and Sistema Shyam Teleservices has been advocating the refarming, COAI which represents Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular is in total disagreement with the former.
 
The issue is likely to come up in the meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on telecom on Wednesday
 
In a letter to the Finance Minister P Chidambaram, AUSPI has urged the government not to be swayed by COAI's deliberate and disingenuous campaign of disinformation on the costs associated with the refarming process and go ahead with refarming of spectrum in 900 MHz band.
 
In his letter to Chidambaram, AUSPI secretary-general Ashok Sud said: "The true costs are substantially lowered, and highly inflated and exaggerated figures provided by COAI should not deter the government from going ahead with re-farming."
 
The stand of AUSPI has been that Most of the 900 MHz spectrum is held by three private operators. Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea for almost a decade without making any additional payment and hence they are likely to complain bitterly about refarming.
 
In October last year AUSPI welcomed the decision taken by the Telecom Commission on full refarming of 900 MHz spectrum at the time of renewal of licenses. It said that the decision is a right step towards in the direction of creating the level play field between incumbent GSM operators and new GSM operators.
 
It had said that the decision would provide an equal opportunity to all operators (including the incumbents) to acquire it through auctions in technically optimum chunks rather than a few operators hoarding it for perpetuating their monopoly. It said that the decision of TC is in accordance with the NTP 2012 which delinks licenses from spectrum and hence, at the time of renewal the operators will have to get it by competitive and transparent methods. The incumbents have reaped significantly high benefits by exclusive use of 900 mhz spectrum for a decade and have gained market leadership and have achieved profitability due to very high quality of service and significantly lower cost associated with 900 MHz spectrum.
 
COAI on the other hand said that it is in total disagreement with the AUSPI representation. “We find it to be ill-conceived and having no factual basis at all", it said. 
 
COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews said that the dual- technology players, represented by AUSPI, had equal opportunity to avail the 900 MHz spectrum now in contention, when they were bidding for the 800 MHz spectrum back in 2001. He however said that they opted to play safe and remain in the sidelines with the more efficient 800 MHz spectrum.
 
He said that even in March 2013, when the 900 MHz spectrum was made available at auction, these dual tech operators restrained from bidding for the spectrum," Mathews added.

For best mobile phone deals: http://shopping.telecomtiger.com/    

For latest updates on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/TelecomTiger/429104257149437